


And Lo! For I shall Conquer

by Eunoiabound



Category: Paris Burning (thecitysmith)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-10
Updated: 2015-12-10
Packaged: 2018-05-03 11:12:30
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,148
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5288525
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eunoiabound/pseuds/Eunoiabound
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The apple was not the beginning of the end for Troy. The apple was simply the beginning.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And Lo! For I shall Conquer

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Paris Burning](https://archiveofourown.org/works/825130) by [thecitysmith](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thecitysmith/pseuds/thecitysmith). 



> This has been rattling around my head since I first read thecitysmith's "Paris Burning" which I absolutely adored and sobbed my way through because no way something that beautiful set in the Brick could end any other way. I believe that rrevolutionaires also wrote a piece on Troy, and it is honestly far superior to mine. My Troy is a little strange, and just maybe doesn't really understand the concept of the Silent Wars.

The apple was small and smooth. It looked entirely ordinary.

  
Paris clutched the apple in his hands, and his eyes searched Troy’s. Slowly, he nods, and leaves her garden.

~

There were three deaths that need to happen from a City to be born. The mother in childbirth, the elder at the end and the young man at war. They all must die, and they all must believe that it is their home. Troy was born, like most, as a young man bled out on the sands of beach outside the city. But Troy remembers that boy, remembers the shock of waking fully formed and hearing her name for the first time echoing in her ears as a death rattle.  She never knew the name of the one who gave her life. She wonders how many die nameless. 

~

“What do you think I would need, Troy, to be great?”

  
Rich brows arched as Troy walked away from Paris, to sit beneath the heavily burdened fruit trees of the court yard. “That, second son of Priam, depends on what you consider greatness.”

~

Troy was a glittering crown on the cusp of a hill, white walls that rose from the rich earth and shone against the sky in both sunlight and the midnight moon. Her streets were vibrant and filled with colour, the sound of music and her people happy. Troy would walk among them, dancing in the streets, her red-gold skirts flaring and twisting around her legs, her bracelets flashing in the light.

She dreams of fire, and wakes laughing. She knows she could have stopped it, she know it like she knows that she will die in flames. What she never remembers is how it begins. It worries the other Cities when she dresses in all the colours ablaze, tattoos the flickering patterns up her arms. Unlike other Cities, she knows that she won’t be able to wear her scars and remember.

~

 

People remember Troy for Helen, and for Paris. They remember Troy for Hector and Achilles, and a great wooden Horse.

They never remember Troy for Cassandra, yet it was Cassandra that might have understood Troy best.

Cassandra, who had walked the temples at Delphi and breathed the fumes, but turned and came back to her beloved Troy, knowing how it all would end.

~

“I never want my name to be forgotten.”

Troy tosses Paris an apple from the tree she is sitting beneath. “Then do something worth remembering.”

~

Athens worries about her, as does Argos. No City should love fire as much as she does, especially a seaside city like Troy. No City should search to greet their end with such reckless abandon, but Troy does not think that other Cities see their end the same way she does. Troy sees a small green apple, blue eyes and golden hair, and never dreams that one day her story will twist in so many ways. She becomes both serpent in a tree and the offer of a many seeded red fruit. She never wanted any godhoods thrust upon her. Her story was always about more that accepting what someone else gave her. 

~

The fate of Cassandra is that she sees, but no one believes.

Athens wonders what Troy saw in the flames before they consumed her.

~

When Paris was born, his mother was told that he was a flame that needed to be extinguished, lest Troy burn. They left him outside the city walls, but Troy walked into the mountains and brought him home, kept him close. There was a great echoing in the walls of her city as he was taken out of the gates that grew louder the longer he was gone, and in that echo Troy heard the drums . It was the sound that she heard in her dreams, and it was the rhythm that her feet stomped when she danced in her streets. The same rhythm for years and years, a constant background to life in the city, like a distant heartbeat that can't be heard until blood is rushing through veins.

~

Athens worries, when Paris the City is young. She knows that most likely, the City would ask about Paris the man. She met the boy only once, sitting beneath cool trees. She and her sisters laughed and talked with the boy, wondering about what makes a man great. Argos proclaimed her King an example, a powerful man who married the most beautiful woman in the world. Athens herself offered that learning made a man great, for greatness was not just power, but ability; generals in their way were just a great as kings, and yet it was a warrior like Achilles that people called greatest of all. And Troy, beautiful Troy, offering nothing but an apple and a question. 

~

Helen’s entrance to Troy was met with little fanfare. Paris paraded her through silent streets, the sound of horse hooves and the creaking of the chariot wheels the only sound besides snapping of awnings in the sea breeze. It was Troy who walked down the palace steps to greet golden Helen. She drapped her with a crimson mantle the colour of Troy's banners and took her hands. “Welcome to you, Helen of Troy.”

  
It was Troy that led Helen into the palace walls, and welcomed her first. It was Troy that took Helen among the markets and the streets, took her dancing and singing. And Helen loved Troy. Troy who did not consider her a prize, like the king of Mycena; a daughter to be bargained away, like her first city. Even Paris considered Helen a symbol, for all that he loved her. Troy loved her despite what she was.  It wasn't Helen’s fault that Troy saw fire and dreamed of drums. 

~

Troy stood beside her beloved Paris as he killed the hero Achilles, and beside Helen when Paris died and his brothers fought for her hand. It was Troy that sat alone  in silence and watched her people drag the sculpted kindling for their pyre into her heart. 

~ 

Years later Athens stands behind Argos as they watch the walls of Troy burn from the inside, so bright against the night that they could not see the stars. They watch their people kill their sister, and wonder at the question their sister asked. 

~

This is what Troy was never able to put into words. She hears the murmers of a thousand languages and voices through history rumbling through history, and all of them are speaking her name. She does not have a shrine or a temple, but her broken body has become an unsolvable puzzle, her name an ideal. Helen of Troy, people say, forgetting the rest, that she was a symptom, not a cause.  Troy, they say, and the death of godtouched heroes and mortal men. Troy, they remember, when they talk of beauty, think of starcrossed love. Troy, they whisper. Troy.

**Author's Note:**

> So there you go. Comment if you like, and go reread "Paris Burning." I know that I am.


End file.
